Thank you.
I was going to go where Tony is going in this way. When Mr. Watson proposed this motion in the House of Commons, we didn't know what it meant. It was a wide-ranging motion. He came over to see me and explained to me what he wanted to do. I said we'd support him. All Liberals supported it. I think all members of the House supported it. But it was never our intent that we would support a huge long process on adoptions. For this committee to determine what our priorities are, I think we could do something significant on it. I certainly support bringing Jeff in and having him give us his view on this. But we've had other private members' bills that we've dealt with in a day or less, so a motion shouldn't necessarily dictate where this committee is going. That's for us to decide.
As Tony said, this is the committee on the status of persons with disabilities, and I have supported Tony's call. Initially, there were moments when I wondered if we needed a subcommittee or not. We were working on different things. We had the poverty study. We're coming to the end of our work on that.
If you look at the report the Senate did, if you look at any work that disabilities groups and poverty groups are doing now, you realize this is a huge issue of both social justice and economic development--social justice for the individuals and economic development for Canada. We're wasting a lot of the human potential of people with disabilities.
We do not do a good job as a country. We don't have a Canadians with disabilities act, as they have in the United States. We don't have a lot of the supports that other countries have. We should be doing this. I fully support having either a subcommittee...but I'd rather see our next big study be on the issue of disabilities. As part of that, for new members, other members know that the last two or three years, we've starting having a day on the Hill when members have spent the day in a wheelchair. I started that on the Hill two or three years ago, and then a couple more joined two years ago. Last year we had a number of people, including Tony, and Maria was on it.
Ed, I'm not sure if you were in a chair.